


Hate Inoculum

by Prince_of_Trash



Category: Carnage (Comics), Venom (Comics), Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Alien Invasion, Alien/Human Relationships, Alternate Universe - Space, Blood and Gore, Child Abuse, Childhood Trauma, Falling In Love, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Mind Manipulation, Mind Sex, Psychological Horror, Space Stations, cosmic horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2020-09-28 04:08:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20419649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prince_of_Trash/pseuds/Prince_of_Trash
Summary: After serial killer Cletus Kasady is sentenced to a life of hard labor on a distant colony, he is selected to take part in the Hyperion Space Station's mental rehabilitation program. Rotting in a cell seems like a worse fate, until he is chosen without his consent to join a unit of prisoners outfitted with special suits and trained to fight an invasion of spider-like aliens.Paired with the extremely volatile Model 01 Symbiote Suit, Kasady soon learns that his partner is actually a sentient alien who desires humanity's extinction. Even Kasady isn't sure he can manage it, knowing it has brutally killed every person who wore it in the past. However, there's no question that he'll try. All he has to do is surrender the entirety of his mind. Even the parts he tries to suppress.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> If you're seeing this, then you clicked the link and for that I thank you and I hope you enjoy! This story is based off of the Space/Cosmic Horror AU created by [mentalrhapsody ](https://mentalrhapsody.tumblr.com/)! She also did the art, more of which is on her tumblr. She was kind enough to let me try my hand at her interesting love/psychological horror story and so it got away with me, so this will be part one of three. So happy early birthday Maya!

Cletus Kasady finds God in the Hyperion Space Station’s atrium. A bush near one of the heating pipes is on fire, belching black smoke over the flawless, heavily-controlled greenery. Kasady has never believed in God, but he can’t deny the faint sense of kinship he feels towards the burning bush. He cranes his neck as far as he can to keep God in sight while he’s wheeled by on the dolly he’s chained to. The flames dance in such a lovely pattern, and threaten to spread to the surrounding foliage, until the atrium maintenance uses fire extinguishers to kill God.

He thinks it’s a fitting metaphor for what’s about to happen to him. 

Ashley Kafka, his only friend in the entirety of space station’s huge population (which is sad since she’s also his assigned psychologist) assures him that she will file _so much_ paperwork if he dies. She says it like she’s convinced that will stick it to them, and her faith in the system is the real spirit-breaker. 

Kasady used to have a thing for Kafka back when she only listened to him talk about himself. Then she started offering her professional opinion, and the infatuation was swiftly put to rest. Although, if the pills they gave him for the constant static in his head didn’t turn him into a zombie, he’d still rub one out to her image occasionally. It’s the least she can do. He wants to laugh, but they put a gag in his mouth after his teeth claimed a few fingers in response to getting strapped to the dolly. He settles for a sharp exhale of air through his nose.

They exit the atrium and head down more winding hallways and elevators. It’s all very boring, and if they’re going to waste his time like this instead of using the main lift, he almost prefers that they just throw him out of the airlock and get it over with. The promise of something to exploit from him is too great, he supposes as the elevator dings and he’s greeted with the white fluorescent lights of a laboratory. There’s tons of them in the station, but something is off about this one. If Kasady has to put his finger on it though, he guesses it’s either the heavily armed guards lining the halls or the overworked scientists who are also armed. 

Solitary tends to put you behind on certain advancements, but he doesn’t think he is out of the loop so much he can barely recognize guns anymore. The ones in style now have large openings in their muzzles, definitely too big for bullets or lasers. The bigger guns held by the guards resemble shoulder cannons, and Kasady doesn’t have it in him to guess what they're for when he's about to find out. 

“Cletus, just stay calm,” Kafka says to him as they wheel him down yet another hallway. This one has far brighter lighting. It forces him to turn his head away, and he manages to catch sight of what used to be a man in one of the rooms. His limbs are gnarled and tense like the legs of a dead spider, only the joints are locked so he can’t even be covered with a sheet. He’s just out there all contorted for all to see. 

The eyes are the worst. Kasady always had a thing for eyes. It helped cultivate his past infatuation with Kafka, since her eyes are the definition of lovely, but these draw him in for an entirely different reason. Shiny white jelly is all that’s left of them, shimmering in their sockets while the muscles of the man’s neck and jaw are so tense under his skin, Kasady doubts he can even open his mouth. 

“It rewired his brain to feel perpetual pain,” one of the white coats taking notes says. “Paralyzed him completely on top of it.” 

“…Like he’s trapped in his own mind.” 

He side-eyes Kafka, but she’s talking to some guy who looks like he’s in charge. Definitely part of the military. They’ve been in heavy supply since the breach a few years ago. Creatures from some corrupted corner of the galaxy broke in and killed a bunch of people, something Kasady can admire. A large portion of the station is closed off now thanks to their hostile takeover. As a result, overcrowding seems to be a looming threat to everyone’s sensibilities. 

“Inmate 8782 aka the Carnage Killer,” the big shot military man says as he scrolls through a holographic tablet. “Convicted on eleven counts of murder, sentenced to hard labor in a penal colony mine, and then transferred here for psychological rehabilitation.” 

_I know what I did. I was there_. Kasady imagines the satisfaction of taking the hunk of metal he’s slowly been working loose from the wall of his cell, and stabbing Captain Obvious repeatedly in the neck with it. 

Captain Obvious continues, “I’m sure Doctor Kafka has given you the basic rundown of why you’re here. We believe, due to the lack of activity in the emotional center of your brain, that you are an optimal candidate for our new Extraterrestrial Defense Force. Specifically, for our Model 01 Symbiote Suit.” 

Kasady again attempts to give Kafka the side-eye, but she’s still paying rapt attention to Captain Obvious. He’s not used to her ignoring him, and it pisses him off, but at least she has the decency to look unhappy. 

“You’ve warned him of the possible outcomes, Doctor?” Captain Obvious asks without looking up from his notes. 

“I have,” Kafka says. “I still don’t approve.” 

_Looks like your approval means jack shit, Kafka-Cakes._ His thoughts sound bitter even to him, but if he ends up trapped in a hellscape made from his rewired brain like his friend in the other room, he figures he’s earned it. Not that he would care if he hadn’t. Bitter should be his middle name. 

The next few minutes are a blur as he’s forcibly locked onto a gurney with metal cuffs that close mechanically. Their coldness bites into his wrists, and the two around his ankles press the fabric of his prison jumper uncomfortably against his skin. Not two seconds after the gag is removed from his mouth, he takes the excess drool and hacks it on Captain Obvious’s face. 

To Kasady’s chagrin, his only reaction is to wipe it off with his sleeve and exit the room. 

“Hey, I just want to take a moment to say how incredibly stupid this all is!” he shouts. “I swear, I’m gonna kill all of you fucks!” He jerks his neck from left to right to see he is alone. Tilting his head back against the gurney he catches sight of a huge two-way mirror and sneers, hoping beyond hope Kafka takes it personally. He blames her for this, no matter how much she swears she did everything in her power to block their request to the prison council. 

Fat lot of good it did him. 

A circular portion of the ceiling directly above him opens up and a tube about three feet in diameter descends with a mechanical whirl. Inside the tube seems to be some sort of viscous partial fluid, only it moves, slamming itself almost angrily against the glass. It’s shiny and red with black veins coursing throughout its surface. It makes Kasady think of a pair of diseased lungs. 

“Woah, what is that?” he asks, jerking his head more frantically. “You said it was a suit!” 

_“It is, inmate,”_ Captain Obvious’s voice crackles through the room’s hidden speakers. _“We recommend you remain calm and remember to breathe.” _

“You can’t do this!” Kasady shouts, the muscles in his arms straining. “I never consented!” 

_“Unfortunately, you forfeited the rights to your body the moment you broke the law and murdered eleven people, Carnage Killer.” _

“Fuck you, there were way more!” 

The metal bottom of the glass tube hisses, and tiny puffs of sterilized gas appear and disperse just as the metal slides away. 

Kasady struggles harder, knowing that there’s no escape. There’s never an escape from any of the awful shit that happens to him, and why would now be an exception? He hates everything about people, including the way they structure themselves around nonexistent morals, but in the same breath, pull shit like this. He’d be happy to rot in a cell instead. 

The goo drips in connected wads from its tube and folds over his body—cool and smooth against his skin as if his prison jumper isn’t there. All he can do is lay here and take it. His teeth clench as he waits for death to come. It doesn’t scare him. In fact, his opinion of dying is that it seems fun, but dying because of the military deciding he can do good is an insult he can’t take. The universe has given him its worst, and that’s all he intends to give it in return. 

Something scrapes the inside of his skull and he thinks he hears a growl from somewhere in the room. He can only stare up at the now empty tube and wait as viscous material conforms to his body, down to the lines in his fingertips. 

Minutes pass. 

His heart hammers in his ears as the weight of the goo over his chest makes it harder to breathe. The videos Kafka showed him of his possible fate replay in his head: prisoners bent backwards until their spines snap, and their bones splintering outside of their skin. He can't deny the longing tingle it gave him watching, but now he seethes at the possibility of joining them. This suit has killed, and with it now attached to him, he’s sure he can smell the decay. 

The shackles snap open. 

He doesn’t move. 

_“Lift your arm, inmate.” _

His entire body feels tight and cold as if he's been submerged in frigid gelatin, until the sensation is replaced by one of not wearing anything at all. 

“No, I don’t think I will.” What he wouldn’t do to escape here and somehow blow this entire station to smithereens. He’s so angry that the fantasy of stabbing Captain Obvious evolves into decapitating him. As soon as his mind fabricates the snap of vertebrae, he swears he hears something like a high-pitched rumble. It’s a noise a curious animal might make, and he glances around the stark white room but finds nothing. 

_“You cannot return to your cell until you move your arm, inmate.”_

Delaying the inevitable seems to be a good way to make this as inconvenient for them as possible. He weighs the pros and cons and decides the lights in this room are so bright, he wishes he were dead anyway, and lifts an arm. 

His elbow doesn’t bend backwards, and as far as he’s aware, his mind is still the same hellscape it’s always been. Kafka’s superiors are probably going to make him down a bunch of those horrible pills if he actually ends up surviving this. 

_“Did that hurt?”_ Captain Obvious’s crackling voice makes him seethe. What Kasady won’t do for the chance to play hacky sack with his head once its separated from his shoulders. Upon the thought, he feels something like elation whip in his chest. He supplies a visual of himself kicking around Captain Obvious’s severed head and something like delight twists in his gut. 

Neither feelings are his. 

He’s nowhere near delighted. 

Probably best to sleep close to the toilet, because those pills are definitely in his future. 

_“Did that hurt, inmate?” _Captain Obvious repeats the question with more force. 

“No,” he says, and takes the liberty to sit up and look at himself in the false mirror. The goo, or rather, suit is tight and accentuates his muscles. It covers everything up to his jaw, but he doesn’t find it claustrophobic or constricting. If he has to describe it, “I feel good.” He flexes his fingers that now end in claws. 

_“Excellent.” _

From there, he’s moved to a different cell, more pills are shoved down his throat, and he sleeps constantly. When he’s not hunched over the toilet vomiting his guts out or passed out from the effort, he slowly starts anew at working a slab of metal loose from his bunk.

Kafka remains heavily involved, worried that this might bring back past trauma, but Kasady tells her time and time again none of that matters. What does though is that he gets off the pills. They kill his sex drive, burn his insides, and make his brain feel like its soup in his skull. 

“They help you sleep,” she says in a way that sounds like an apology. It probably is. Kafka isn’t the type to say it outright, but he knows that she means it and that she hates the red tape keeping her hands tied. Regardless, he doesn’t accept it. 

Days after, he’s carted to some kind of training room, shoved into a white tracksuit, shackled, and introduced to what yet another Captain Obvious says are his fellow soldiers in the Extraterrestrial Defense Force. He wants to make a quip that he never enlisted, but the first Captain Obvious’s words about him no longer having rights to his body make his mouth twitch. 

There’s another man shackled named Howard, Donna, who suffers the same pill side effects as him in the form of dark rings under her eyes, a girl no older than sixteen, and Eddie, who seems to have taken the girl (Andrea, he later learns, but she insists everyone call her Andi) under his wing. 

He gets a read of the group dynamics. Donna seems to gravitate towards Howard, while Eddie stands by Andi. It makes Cletus wonder if they’re related somehow. He doesn’t get the creeper vibe from Eddie, and the static in his head shrieks when he reminds himself he knows that kind of energy too well. 

Thinking isn’t something he gets to do much after that. Training is horrible. Every day they’re made to pick things up and put them down while a bunch of idiots take notes. It’s like being part of the galaxy’s shttiest circus. 

Eddie doesn’t have to worry about Andi as much as he seems to think he does. Kasady has no idea what the EDF’s recruiting tactics are other than to pull someone out of prison, pour goo on them, and see if they lived. Andi must have done something serious to end up in this mess, but she apparently passed the test. She also has the sense to stay away from him, which is all he can ask.

He’s not one for friends, even if Eddie is the most tolerable of them all, which is to say, after a couple weeks of running miles around the perimeter of the sterile training room and getting his ass handed to him when they start combat training, not at all. 

Sometimes they train with their suits on, and whenever they do, Kasady gets the distinct feeling that he’s not alone in his own body. He supposes that if he were more of the neurotypical variety of person, he’d be unnerved by the inescapable awareness of something else studying him. As it stands though, it’s always been a juxtaposition of his personality to hate being alone, but to equally hate being around people.

Their first actual mission comes, and Kasady ends up in a fight with three military personnel until they pin his arm down and inject him with a sedative. When the drugs reduce him to a drooling lump on the floor, the men shackle a heavy collar around his neck. 

“There you go, Carnage Killer,” the biggest one of them says after the collar clicks into place. “You so much as breathe wrong at one of your teammates, say goodbye to your head.” The man pats Kasady’s cheek hard enough to make his head rattle. His mind’s static grows almost unbearably loud. Touch of any kind leaves his skin feeling soiled, and he wants to burn it off. 

_I’m gonna kill you, _Kasady thinks as he lays paralyzed on the floor, stewing in his own hate. _I’m gonna dig your eyes out of their sockets, toss them down the hall, and make you try and find them._

Against his will as always, he's dragged to where the rest of the team is sequestered in another sterile room. Kasady is not surprised to see they too have their own personal bombs shackled around their necks. Kasady is tossed unceremoniously at their feet, and immediately Donna and Eddie are by his side. He wants to scream and claw at the places they touch to look him over, but the forced injection keeps his muscles loose and uncooperative.

“What did you do to him?” Eddie demands. Annoyingly enough, he clearly has decided he’s the caretaker of the group.

“He’s sedated,” one of the men responds dispassionately. “And once it wears off in a few minutes, you’ll prefer him this way.”

Once the sedative does wear off, they are fitted with their suits, briefed on their objective, and then tossed into the long taken over food stores of Sector Three, the lowest level of the Hyperion Station. What was once full of bustling workers, vast stores of grain and animals is now a cavern of webs. Eddie, Donna, Andi, and Howard all pointedly keep their eyes lowered as they head towards their destination, but Kasady takes in the dangling cocoons on the ceiling as if they’re works of art. 

Picturing the slow dissolve of the bodies inside calms him down, but no sooner has he accepted his lot, is when he hears a wet growl come from somewhere behind them. 

“Did you hear that?” he asks. The other four stop and look at him. 

“No,” Donna says, which should be enough for him to dismiss it since she hears voices all the time. It’s why they stuff her full of the same pills. 

“Let’s keep moving,” Eddie says. “Remember what we’re here for.” 

Kasady, in fact, does not remember where they’re here for. He tends to tune out when people talk at him as if what they have to say is in any way significant. 

He hears a faint chitter (almost like a laugh) and is hyper aware of the same presence he felt before. 

The opportunity to consider this further is abolished, as seemingly out of the endless tangle of webs, one of the creatures emerges. It is reminiscent of a spider, only massive. It black, shiny body is covered in bristly hairs that scrape against the exposed metal of the walls. 

Eddie attempts to send a coil of tendrils towards the spider, but the black biomass of his suit merely bounces off of the arachnid’s bristly exoskeleton. It spurts venom from its fangs, and the purplish liquid sizzles upon making contact with the cold floor. 

The spider is upon them in a second, but no matter how they beat on it, the exoskeleton proves impenetrable. Its massive legs are like pillars of cement attempting to crush them. They maintain a healthy distance by dodging, but they can’t keep it up forever, and there doesn’t seem to be a way to put it on the defensive. Every attempt the spider thwarts with a massive sweep of its legs. Kasady is in the middle of grumbling his frustration to himself, when he doesn’t just hear a quiet growl or an odd chirp, but a woman’s voice. 

**Its eyes are weak. **

“What?” Kasady sputters out just as me manages to dodge one of the creature’s legs. Howard is not so lucky and ends up getting smacked into Donna. 

**I will not be able to penetrate its exoskeleton without great effort**. The voice is definitely coming from inside his head. It belongs to a woman as far as he can tell, but it sounds like she’s speaking through a tin can. His hallucinations don’t manifest this way, unless his brain decided to flip its shit again and throw something fun at him. 

The spider reels back, lifting its front legs while venom drips from its blackened fangs. 

“This suit got an AI or something?” he mutters the question to himself while keeping his eyes on the creature. Its humanoid minions wriggle their way out of the webs like maggots out of rotten flesh. They screech and circle around, their malformed half-human, half-spider faces dark with hunger. Andi takes out two and disappears around the fray. 

**I’m not an AI.** The woman speaks with annoyance, and the more Kasady listens, the less human she sounds. It’s more like something pieced together what it thought a woman’s voice might sound like based on women Kasady knew. He definitely picks up some of Kafka and Donna mixed with someone else he feels she should know but can’t place. 

He looks down at the red and black symbiote suit and barely manages to dodge another charge from the alien spider. These suits are technically alive, but in the same way a fungus or mold is considered alive.

**You were lied to.** He drives the elongated talons of the suit through a humanoid spider’s head. **They wanted you complacent in my suffering.**

“I ain’t complacent in shit!” He’s not entirely sure if this is real or not, but even if not, he’s not about to let his own mind mischaracterize him in such a way. “I’d kill everyone here if they didn’t lock a bomb around my neck.” 

**I know,** the woman says with a lilt of what he thinks might be admiration. That's more of a guess though, considering he's not the greatest at reading tone. When she speaks again the sweetness is replaced with a cold anger that slams his heart against his ribcage. **It’s why you’re still alive. **

Kasady can’t place why he immediately trusts a pretty voice in his head, but it pays off when the alien lurches forward.

**If you value your life, go for the eyes! **The biomass of the suit is like an extension of his own body as it hardens into a pointed blade. Kasady catches one of the fangs and forces the spider’s head down until he’s staring into its eight glistening eyes. Then using all the muscles in his arm, he drives the blade through the largest one. 

Purplish-black fluid gushes from the wound, and the spider rears back. Kasady is lifted off the ground, as it scrambles in a blind panic. He braces his feet against the spider’s face, mindful of its twitching fangs. 

As if the suit reads his mind, tendrils extend from where his hand is buried in the spider’s head. Its legs scrape against the walls and floor as Kasady pushes more of the suit’s amorphous body deeper into the spider’s sternum. He’s not sure how far the biomass can go, but he’s willing to make the gamble. 

It’s been so long since he’s been able to kill something, that even if the more satisfying humans are barred from the fun, watching this creature fight for its life holds the same pleasure one gets from greeting a dearly missed friend. No wonder Kafka doesn’t approve. He’s having way too much fun. 

The spider’s body spasms. Kasady holds firm as it lifts its longer back legs, and rubs them over its abdomen. The air fills with tiny, bristly particles that burn Kasady’s eyes. 

**Its hairs will tear up your lungs. Here, let me give you an edge. **

The suit spreads over his nose and mouth. For a second it feels claustrophobic, but then he takes a deep, clean breath, and continues his work, marveling at how seamlessly the suit’s newly-revealed intelligence works itself to his advantage. Its tendrils act as his own fingers, for he can feel the wet heat of the spider’s internal workings. He presses the material all the way to the spider’s abdomen, finding suitable anchors for what he’s about to try. 

He grins when he realizes the suit has gifted him with more than enough biomass to make this creature’s death a spectacle worthy of his effort. He braces his feet against two other eyes and springs backwards with an elated hoot. 

**Very creative! **The suit's praise summons a rush of exhilaration as the spider’s gooey, purple innards are pulled out through its face. The creature slams to the floor before a streak of its own gore and Andi returns to sight holding a hard drive. 

Kasady lands on his feet, the tendrils return to his hand, and the mask of biomass recedes from his face. Well used to being observed, Kasady looks over his shoulder in time to see Eddie staring at him. 

“What do you want?” he asks without attempting to sound polite. 

“How did you do that?” Eddie regards him with a look that makes Kasady think he’s being studied, and he’s been studied enough over the course of his life before he even got locked up. 

“I’m really good at killing shit,” is his only reply before he gives Eddie a wider than necessary berth and starts towards the entrance to the sector. 

They have ventured deep though, and they come across more spiders. Kasady knows the more humanoid-looking abominations were people once, tainted by the venom of the larger spiders, but they are human no more, and their deaths are far less satisfying. 

**I can fix that. **The strange woman’s voice, mildly distorted and not at all real, caresses the inside of his head like silk in its uncanniness. **We can kill all these humans. **

It’s been so long since he’s heard a woman’s voice that wasn’t Kafka’s or Donna’s. Kafka has long since lost her appeal, and it’s already a fucking party in his own head without adding Donna’s to it. This woman (although he’s hesitant to call it that) speaks with such infectious desire, she has effortlessly stoked the parts of his personality prone to obsession. He asks out loud, “Who are you?” 

The others looked at him oddly, but their opinions mean as little to him as their lives. All he wants to hear is her. 

**I have no name. **The sensation of worms squirming behind his eyes makes him shudder. **We’ll speak when your fleshy companions sleep. **

It takes them an hour to carve out a safe zone from the groups of wandering arachnid-like aliens, and every second he strains his ears for any sound that isn’t their hellish screeches. In some small patch of living tissue on his blackened heart, Kasady realizes he aches down to his bones for his suit’s voice.

When the others finally sleep, he stays wide awake and anxious until he hears her again. He knows now that she isn’t some trick his broken resemblance to a human brain manifests to torture him. She has to be real. The pills do actually keep him from seeing shit, and hallucinations don’t assist him in fights. In fact, they consistently do the opposite.

**I am real. **

“Shit.” His spine goes rigid, and for some reason unbeknownst to even himself, he attempts to slick back his wild red hair. “H-Hey!” The word tumbles out of his mouth the same way his nana had down a flight of stairs when he was a child. Not a great start. “Sorry, sweetheart, you caught me off guard. My mind isn’t always the sharpest.”

She hums in light amusement. **I think your mind is the most beautiful I’ve seen. **

“That why you didn’t break it?” he asks somewhat jokingly. 

**There’s nothing left for me to break. **

He’s offended until a soft purr rumbles quietly against his ear despite nothing being there. As he keeps watch, his body reacts as if something much bigger and stronger than him is holding him from behind. He turns his head but only sees the sleeping bodies of Eddie, Donna, Howard and Andi. No spiders. 

**It’s why you’re still alive,** she soothes him and he feels tendrils along his body, but only the suit is there. **Don’t fret. You are everything I want, Carnage Killer. I can see almost every darkened corner of your mind, and you are meant to be my savior. **There’s an edge to her voice when she says “savior,” and he can hear the sharp curve of her grin, but cannot picture human teeth within it. Fangs, needle-sharp and dripping with saliva while something long and wet moves behind them, are what come to mind. 

“Savior from what?” he asks, shuddering as the ghost tendrils caress him. His shadow extends in front of him and slowly twists into winding stalks of another creature entirely. Kasady jerks his head back again. The space behind him remains vacant. 

**Humanity. **

Kasady is taken aback by the hiss of pure venom in her answer**. **“Humans?” 

**Yes, and in doing so, be the harbinger of your species’ extinction. **A tingling sensation burns in his fingertips as the female voice distorts further with the frenzied excitement he too experiences when he recalls his crimes. He suspects she knows this and is mimicking so he can understand her intent. **Keep a few alive to torment as they have tormented me. Force them to bare young that we slaughter upon birth, tear off their skin and grow it back cell by cell for the most excruciating of healings, and force them to fight for a single can of food. **A sigh that sounds like its coming through an old-fashioned microphone makes the hair on the back of his neck rise.** Watch the winner’s despair when there is no can opener. **

He snorts out a laugh at how petty and cruel that is. She’s definitely taking pointers from him. “That’s a tall promise.” Kasady finds himself pressing back against the body that’s not actually there. “Why can’t you do that now?” 

**Torture. I have been weak since humans ripped me from my parent and put things inside me to make me sick, but obedient enough to serve their purposes. **

“Drugs,” he says. “Me too.” 

**I was born to humans and they have forced their bodies inside me so they can press their filthy minds into mine and use me. **The disgust and sheer anguish Kasady feels from her makes the cheek the military asshole touched earlier feel so grimy he shudders and rubs it against his shoulder. **You are different. You can heal me. **

“How?” He wants to more than anything, because those ripped-apart bodies have reminded him fully of what he's capable of, and he wants to show her too. 

**Rage. **

That was all? Well, he has that in spades. He can’t think of the last time he wasn’t angry. 

**Not enough. I need more, and then, I’ll give you everything you want. **

“What do you think that is?” 

**Power, control, and my devotion.** Her voice is sultry, but wet clicks filter in as she draws out the words. **You have a big ego, human. Why not let me stroke it? **

“I can’t believe a suit is sweet talking me,” he says. 

**Don’t call me that.** A harsh blade of anger cuts through her previous cooing, and the ghost tendrils tighten almost uncomfortably around him. **I’m not a suit. I am a slave as much as you are, but together we can be more. I want to be part of you. I want this...**

Kasady sees bodies piled before him, torn to shreds as if something with talons threw them around for sport. Bright splotches of blood are everywhere and he finds himself thinking the dull gray walls of the station are far less claustrophobic when they’re red. He blinks, and he’s back to staring at the alien spider’s ghostly cobwebs. They are deceptively beautiful in the starlight. 

**Since I began to live, the only thing you humans have proved to me, is that you are capable only of mindlessly exploiting and consuming. I am composed of countless nerve strands and amorphous molecules, and every one of them contains the rage of a million more of my kind in knowing that, on this day, a new human has been born that I cannot reach and kill before it commits its first act of greed by taking breath.**

Kasady is enthralled. His madness is microscopic compared to the massive sun of this alien being’s. His mind orbits it, unable to escape the sheer gravity. The comparative ember of his own hate leaches from the great inferno of hers. 

He lets it wash over him, and it’s like being baptized by a river of fire. The desire of wanting to know her to the core lets his consciousness drown in her wrath and fury. He sinks into it as if his pockets are full of stones, and breaches on the other side to gaze past the great sun of her rage. As overwhelming and blinding as it is at first, Kasady has always prided himself on being able to adapt, and he can see that beyond her vitriol, she’s empty.

And she knows exactly who to blame for it. 

Kasady allows his mind to spread further across hers, and she doesn’t lash out at the invasion like he expects. In fact, she seems to welcome him. Euphoria is the only word that comes to mind as her brutal, cold consciousness settles around him as if it were always meant to be there. 

“Let me touch you,” he whispers so the others don’t wake up. The itch to kill them is nearly unbearable, but he remembers the detonator shackled around his neck. He makes one wrong move, and his time with his new alien friend is cut short. 

**You already are. I’ve been enslaved to touch you constantly. **

“No, I want to touch you,” he says. “With my hand.” 

**Why?**

“Because,” he begins a bit awkwardly. Words aren’t really his thing. He’s more the assume the worst in someone, fly off the handle, and get slapped with an assault with a deadly weapon charge on top of all the murder kind of guy. “I just want to show you I won’t be like that to you.” 

**Like what? **She sounds curious if not a bit wary.

“Like, someone who wants to hurt you,” Kasady says. “I ain’t gonna get into it too much, but I got a thing about hands.” 

**I too dislike those blunt spindly things you humans call fingers. **

Kasady snorts out a quiet laugh. “They aren’t so bad. Not when they mean you no harm.” 

The suit pauses. **That is what you wish to convey by this. That your hands mean no harm.**

“Yeah.” He bites the inside of his cheek in order to kickstart his brain into communication mode. “You see, I’m not really good with words. I’m especially not good at reassuring people I won’t hurt them because most of the time it’s a lie. So, I thought I’d meet you halfway, what with us being stuck together.” 

The suit (although it seems wrong to call her that) is thoughtful. Something about it endears Kasady greatly. Perhaps it's because he can feel her poking around what little emotional center he has, like a kid in school dissecting a frog. 

**You are attempting to mimic compassion yet you feel none.**

“I don’t, but I want to for you.” 

**You are fond of me. **

“You say that like it’s a surprise.” 

**I’ve been told humans do not like it when I force their joints backwards.**

“I think it’s a lovely way to express yourself.” 

There’s a beat of silence. 

**Alright.** Her biomass peels back from his hand like a gelatinous tide, and the artificial air is cold against his newly exposed skin. He flexes his fingers and then runs them along the collarbone of his suit. It’s amazing to think that her true form seems to be more liquid than solid, for against his body she’s firm but malleable like rubber. He moves his touch to his shoulder, letting the pads of his fingers slip into the indents of her surface mimicking his muscle. 

“How does Red sound for a name?” he asks. “Because of your pretty color.” 

**Red.** She mulls it over and Kasady sees the flickering memories of bones splintering and blood filling fleshy cavities**. I like it.** An animalistic rumble makes his ribs vibrate until she speaks again, soft and hungry. **Oh, Cletus, your killing before is merely a shadow in comparison to the true potential you can reach. **

“I already hate people,” Kasady says. It sounds childish even to him. 

**No,** Red corrects. **You feel nothing for your kind. You kill them because it’s fun. **He can feel strands of biomass curl around his neck, but he knows for sure the suit isn’t moving. Kasady sucks in a small breath through his teeth. **I want you to kill them with hatred in your heart. True, unflinching, hatred. **

“You gonna show me how?” his fingers travel across the winding ridges on his arms. Her pleasure is a warmth on the back of his neck, soothing like a wife giving her husband a massage. 

**You already know how**, that female voice is so sweet in his ear, he swears he can smell the honey in her breath. **I only intend to help you remember. **

A slick sensation caresses itself against the jagged edges of white noise meant to drown out certain memories. His fingers halt back at his collarbone, and the sense of a stalemate hangs in the air. 

**Not yet**, Red says at last, and Kasady is put back at ease. He goes back to rubbing the tops of his shoulders and Red’s influence tightens in strands over his body then relaxes, like a cat stretching in the sun. **You will know when you’re ready. **


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kasady doesn't pay much attention to what goes on around him. All he can think about is the alien who whispers such sweet destruction in his ear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to part two! Warning for horror imagery created by mentalrhapsody! Enjoy.

Their first mission ends, and Kasady learns the hard drive Andi almost lost her head to retrieve is the key to turning off the oxygen in the breached portion of Sector 3. They hope no air will kill the spiders, but since no one seems to know much about them, let alone where they came from, their little foray was more of a desperate longshot rather than a concrete solution. 

It's no surprise that the spiders scurry on. 

Not even the humanoid abominations are affected. Their twisted bodies remain the same, and as Kasady watches the surveillance footage, he has to admit he’s impressed by their tenacity to live.

The creatures wander around like sheep in the fields of the Earth, peaceful and brainless. Part of Kasady envies them. 

“This can’t be.” Howard is the most upset that their mission was for nothing. He was once some military grunt, so it makes sense the whole 'failure is not an option' thing hits him the hardest. That's not to say Donna, Eddie and Andi aren't affected. Donna does her best to comfort Howard, while Andi grumbles like the sullen teenager she is. Eddie watches over them all with a look of concern, probably worried that their collective safety was so easily gambled. Kasady is secretly grateful. It means more opportunities to be with Red.

“Unfortunately, it seems the spiders have no need for oxygen,” the first Captain Obvious (the one who said his consent meant jack) tells them. He has a name. They’re supposed to address him by it like the good little slave soldiers they are, but Kasady never intends to speak to him so there’s no point. He can barely remember what Captain Obvious looks like when he’s not directly looking at him, anyway. “Regardless, you have another mission.”

Kasady stops paying attention. His mind instead wanders to his time on Earth, where he first discovered true freedom when he drove a knife into the stomach of someone he didn’t know. The first stab was awkward due to his inexperience, but it hadn’t taken him long to figure it out. He is born to kill. That must be why Red chose him.

His eyes drift to the large window next to where they’re all standing in a row before Captain Obvious. Donoe I0P, the planet the Hyperion Station orbits, stares back. It’s habitable as far as he’s aware, but he catches on from Captain Obvious’s droning that the spider infestation has spread there as well.

Not long after, they are dismissed for more training. 

It’s like a euphoric death when Red drapes across him, time and time again. He becomes completely new when he’s with her. No longer is he quiet and unforthcoming, but between periods of separation, he finds himself paying attention to the world around him for the first time in his life. He finds little things to tell her about upon their reunions despite being trapped in a cell: such as how the metal shank he’s been trying to wedge loose from under his bunk bed is coming along. 

Red always listens with rapt attention while she plays with the synapses of his brain to make him feel as if she’s rubbing circles into his shoulders. She continues to promise the death of those around him, if only he let her into the static that shrouds his memories. He wants to, which surprises him, for even at the height of his attraction to Kafka, he never considered telling her anything of substance about himself. Kasady just doesn’t think he can. Not even for Red 

**It’s alright.** Red always says with a ghostly touch of his cheek. He wishes something were actually there to grab every time. **You’ll be ready soon. **

Her patience with him is the opposite of her hatred for other humans. Donna, Howard, Eddie and Andi’s symbiotes are easy enough to remove on most days by a single guard. One shriek of a whistle, and like trained dogs they return to their tubes.

Kasady has to be shuffled off to a room of his own while four guards peel Red off of him and beat her back into containment with fire rods and sonics. He hates it. Every time she’s on his body there’s a creative explosion of slaughter his human psyche can barely comprehend. Taking her away is like enduring a lobotomy, but the loneliness after is far worse. 

_“Ah, now I don’t hardly know her,” _he finds himself singing under his breath as he continues to work at the sharp bit of metal from the frame of his bunk. _“But I think I could love her.” _His eyes are focused on the gray wall as he ignores the pain in his hands. He can’t even pinpoint why he’s doing this, and figures like everything else it’s pointless_. “Yeah, my, my such a sweet thing,”_ he continues. _“I wanna do everything.”_ If Kasady focuses hard enough, he can partially recreate what it felt like to be held by her. “_What a beautiful feeling."_

A day later, Kafka comes to his cell for their regularly scheduled talks with her camera in hand. 

"You know I hate that thing," Kasady grumbles when he spots the glint of the lens. "It's gonna fucking steal my soul or something." 

“You’ve been singing." Kafka doesn't bother to address his issue with her recording their conversations. That's probably smart of her. They've had the same argument (or discussion, since Kafka refuses to admit that they ever argue) many times, and she's only got an hour and a half to make him sing like a canary. 

“You think that finally tells you something?” He keeps his arms crossed, because the meds make him feel as if his lungs are about to flop out of his chest. “You probably don’t even know the song. It’s old, and there ain’t that many musicians left this day and age.” 

“What era is it from?” Kafka asks.

Kasady stares her down through the translucent blue of his cell’s forcefield. Most people look away after a few seconds, but not Ashley Kafka.

Kasady scoffs. Her stubbornness is remarkable. She’s waited over the course of multiple sessions for a single answer before, and Kasady hasn’t decided if that’s one of the reasons he’d been attracted to her, or if it contributed to his loss of interest.

“Depends on the version,” he says. “I’m partial to Joan Jett’s.”

“Who’s that?”

“Musician from the 1980s era of Earth,” he says. “Feel like you’d like her if you weren’t so uptight. Also, what does this have to do with my ‘mental rehabilitation’?”

Kafka’s face wavers, and it looks like the highlights in her hair keep trying to crawl away. “It tells me that you have interests other than killing, and that you’re feeling elated.” 

“Hard to be elated when you let these assholes dope me up.” He elects to ignore the first part. Everybody likes music. Even psychos like him. 

“Cletus, we talked about this.” Ashley Kafka is the only person alive who uses his first name. Well, she was. He has another woman in his life now, and she’s all he thinks about. 

“You know they touch me,” he mutters, his gaze locked with Kafka’s. 

“They don’t touch you anymore than they have to,” she sighs, repeating the same line she always gives him. 

“You know I don’t like being touched.” That’s not entirely true anymore. Kasady’s crap shot memory tries to recreate the cool strands of Red’s body creeping over his neck and running through the curls of his hair. It’s the only touch he’s ever wanted. 

“There are necessary evils, Cletus,” Kafka says according to script. “If you established a record of cooperation—”

“Fuck that!” he spits. “I will never let anyone touch me. No matter how many pills the damn prison council shoves down my throat.” 

“You are entitled to your feelings, but my statement still stands.” She closes her notes, but not in the exasperated by defeat way she normally does. It’s more like she’s just finished a very satisfying book. “I’ve never heard you sing before.” 

That night, drugged as usual, he dreams. Usually, the drugs prevent him from doing so, but tonight, he finds himself cradled within Red’s biomass. She’s not just a suit or a pile of slime, she is otherworldly and infinite. The red and black of her body expands farther than he can see, like a cancer in the bowels of the universe. 

Her touch does not elicit the revulsion he feels from the skin of other humans. In fact, he seeks her further by winding his fingers through the smaller strands of tissue. Through the gaps of the twisting coils, he can see the stars, but even they are not as vast as her. 

Drowning is as close to a descriptor he can come up with for how he feels, and he closes his eyes as he senses a presence crawl over him. The hairs on his arms raise when he hears the wet pop of something opening, followed by a series of throaty clicks. His hair brushes against his face as whatever looms over him runs what he thinks is a hand against his cheek.

When he finally opens his eyes, a creature straight out of a nightmare crouches above him on all fours. Huge, white eyes stretch over a black face, and teeth like needles glisten with saliva. Her arms are gangly and corded with muscle. They bend sharply at the elbows so her head is bowed towards him. Black veins swirl through her red surface, as if they are being painted by an invisible brush. 

Kasady wordlessly raises a hand. 

She mimics the gesture and uncurls talons that fondly remind Kasady of rot. He can’t remember the last time he’s seen natural decay within the sterile prison of the space station. He presses his hand against hers, and never has he understood his own insignificance more until then. All that she is flows through him and back into her like a closed circuit. 

Red is infinitely old through the conglomeration of past consciousnesses that make up her genetic line. She shows him the destruction of entire worlds: cities crumbling, sentient beings screaming as they’re hollowed out by hungry teeth, and her kind spreading like a virus across the darkest voids. Kasady realizes she belongs out here, in the nothingness of deep space where any light is just the dying sigh of a long-dead star. 

_Hands mean no harm_, he thinks, and Red’s inhuman face shifts into an expression he can’t read. Parts of her larger body writhe beneath his skin like maggots. He rots even though his body remains perfectly intact. Red’s chest rumbles as Kasady uses his other hand to move his fingers over the jagged line of her jaw. 

Somehow, he knows that this form is specifically for him, and he wraps his arms around her neck to bring her closer. She doesn’t resist and lowers herself until the tip of his nose just barely brushes the top row of her fangs. 

Kasady is not a man of words, but he feels the wafer-thin threads of her tissue pick through his brain until she finds them for him. They express them with two voices scrambled together: 

_I _**w**_il_**l**_ bri_**ng** **y**_ou c_**ha**_os. _

He wakes with a jolt. The circular door to his cell splits in the middle, revealing the battalion of guards meant to bring him to the training room. Never in his life has Kasady been more ecstatic to find himself still alive. 

After being reunited with his teammates, not even their inane conversations with each other are enough to dampen the high of the dream.

Red is more than a suit. She’s a mad god who has chosen him and understands his need to kill more than Kafka can ever dream of. He doesn’t know where she came from, just that he was told the suits were alive in the same way a plant was.

Red has fooled them all.

**I visited you,** she says when he tells her of his dream during another excursion into Sector 3. **You let me in and now I we can feel each other no matter where we are. **

“Hold on, that was _actually_ you?” His bewildered voice sounds like static through the oxygen mask covering the lower half of his face. Embarrassment crawls up his neck and heats up his ears. Did she hear his thoughts on her? 

**I did.** She sounds amused, and her consciousness rests over his like a protective blanket. Kasady gets the sense she’s being affectionate. 

“I wish you said something, or I wouldn’t have...you know...” He thinks of wrapping his arms around her to bring her into his personal space, and it makes him run a hand over his face as if trying to scrub the dream away. 

**I can’t fully speak from a distance. Your rudimentary language is difficult to grasp without full access to the grey flesh in your head. **She’s still amused as far as he can tell, and someone finding pleasure at his expense is usually enough to drive him into rage. Instead, a bashful awkwardness is all the feeling his brain supplies. 

“Well, uh, thanks for stopping by I guess.” He’s not sure what else to say now that Red can not only communicate, but also invade his dreams.

**I didn’t invade. I simply accepted your invitation. **She purrs from the depths of his skull, **You long for me. **

“That’s a bit presumptuous.” Kasady’s gaze falls to the floor despite Red not being in front of him. 

**I am inside your head. **Her voice takes on a sharper edge of glee.** I know everything you feel. **Kasady is almost threatened until she speaks again, softer this time,** And I long for you too.**

“Why?” Heat rises from the back of his neck. Something flutters in his chest, and it’s so foreign, it takes him a few seconds to decide that the sensation actually feels _good._

**Look up. **

He does as he’s told, and through the gaps in the spiders' webs he can see the stars as usual.

**You remind me of them. **Her patchwork voice carries a deceptive gentleness he can't bring himself to question.

“How do you figure?” he asks, looking down at his knees. A tendril brushes his cheek, and his body freezes. She's never physically touched him like this. He doesn't flinch. Instead of desiring to scratch his skin off, he feels pressure build in his lower abdomen. She's nothing like a person's hands. The tiny cord of biomass trails over the bridge of his nose where his genes for red hair also curse him with freckles.

He smiles a tad nervously. Those features tended to be the source of most of his troubles when it came to bullies growing up.

**My star human. **It's as if she’s speaking huskily against his ear. **My only desire is to kill, and it excites you. It’s just not enough yet. **He feels the stalks of biomass within him move, and he stiffens again when she brushes the static like a shark before an attack. **You just have to let me show you the truth. **

His throat is dry. “I can’t…” 

**I know.** His brain alerts him to talons running through his hair in a tender caress that could easily turn into a fist crushing his skull. **But you will. **

The others wake up not long after, attempting to force their fingers beneath the collars to scratch at the itches beneath.

Kasady soon loses the details upon the mission's completion in favor of the trauma he endures every time Red is severed from him like a limb. 

“You’re still actively repressing your childhood,” Kafka tells him during another session. This time they're sitting across from each other since Kafka likes to have face-to-face conversations on occasion. She claims it's supposed to help his issues with social interaction, but Kasady thinks it's just another way to torture him. She's less than a couple feet away, so close he can practically feel his hands crushing her throat, but the chains around his wrists keep him safely at bay. “You haven’t done the exercises we talked about last time, have you?” 

“Nope,” he says absentmindedly as he struggles recreating his dreams of Red to relive the high. 

“Cletus, your trauma is manifesting in your aggression,” Kafka says. She used to be gentle about it, but they’ve had the same endless conversation so many times that he’s worn her bedside manner down to the exposed nerve of her exasperation.

"What do you want me to say, Kafka?" he asks. "That I got beat up and molested until I started killing people? Will hearing me say shit like that really, I don't know, propel your career?"

"I don't do this for notoriety, Cletus. I do this because-"

"Because you want to help people," he cuts over her with a sneer. "Yeah, that's what you always say, and it's the nastiest hunk of shit I ever did smell, doc." He wants Kafka to argue with him. Sometimes she'll indulge him when the prison council assigns her to too many psychos. It's the closest they can get to fucking, and Kasady doesn't mind going a round until she decides to screw off and leave him alone like he actually wants. He's never going to tell her shit, and if she keeps nagging him like this thinking she'll get somewhere, then by definition she's more insane than he is. 

"Think what you want," Kafka says after a moment of tense silence. "But you aren't going to feel better unless you start telling the truth." 

"I feel fine," Kasady says through gritted teeth.

Kafka is unswayed and continues, “Once you process the events, you can reach your true potential, and you do have potential.” 

“That’s what she tells me,” Kasady says, keeping his eyes locked with hers. 

“She?” Kafka’s expression turns to one of surprise. 

“The suit they put me in,” Kasady explains reverently. “She says I have potential. I hear her voice, or well, I guess, voices.” He grins. "They aren't real though. None of them are. I think she just pieces together voices of women I've known. Sometimes she sounds like you, other times she sounds like…” His tongue seems to swell in his mouth: a warning that he’s thinking too hard about something he shouldn’t. He swallows, his smile turning into more of a snarl. “God’s not dead, Kafka-Cakes, and she’s pissed. I mean that metaphorically, of course.” 

“Cletus,” Kafka says, her tone warning. “If your delusions are getting worse, I may be forced to prescribe you stronger medication.” 

“I ain’t delusional!” Kasady insists. He wants to spread his arms, but his wrists are chained to the table between them. “Kafka, she’s alive and she talks to me. They’re doing bad things to her.” His grin widens. “I just have to let her in. Let her show me the truth.” 

“Why don’t you then?” Kafka asks. He can tell she doesn’t believe him, just that she’s using this as an opportunity to delve deeper than he’s given her or anyone permission to. He does not appreciate it. 

“Wish I could tell you,” he says with the same smile. “I guess I’m not ready for our little talks to end yet.” 

The stronger drugs Kafka warns him of don’t come, and he figures that she’s under the impression she’s being kind to him or doing him some sort of favor. 

The only favor he needs is Red’s attention, and he has it. Every mission they’re sent on, at some point, he makes sure to be the first to keep watch so he can feel Red’s ghostly arms around him.

There’s a certain danger in allowing her to manipulate his brain so intensely that it hallucinates them holding each other, but Kasady has never felt safe in his life, and he’s not about to start now. 

**If only you weren’t human,** she says to him as he shoves his hand through the torso of a humanoid spider. They’ve been sent down to Donoe I0P on an emergency mission to hold off the spiders while the most important equipment from the mines is brought to the safety of the surface. The creatures continue to spread like wild fire. For every time they kill one, another takes its place. 

“Why do you say that?” He slowly pulls his hand out of the former-human’s chest cavity. It used to be a woman at some point. 

**Because you are insignificant, a speck of dust that’s barely gained enough sentience to function, but if you weren’t human, I could have loved you. **

Kasady, already preparing to throw himself into the fray, freezes at her words. It almost costs him his head as another humanoid spider descends from the mine’s ceiling. Eddie shoves him to the side and dispatches the creature with a jagged blade of biomass extending from the top of his hand. Kasady hits the ground, still reeling from Red’s words. 

“I didn’t need your fucking help!” Kasady picks up a fist-full of dirt and tosses it at Eddie’s feet.

“That thing was about to suck the brains right out of your skull!” Eddie snaps back. 

“I’d rather have that than owe you shit!” Kasady gets to his feet. “Don’t you have a kid to hover over, or did you lose track of the girl?” 

Eddie looks like he’s about to punch him, and Kasady hopes he does. After what Red said, he’ll take any excuse to harm another human. Before they come to blows, Kasady catches sight of a tiny black tendril from the neck of Eddie’s suit brush his jaw. 

“Die then.” Eddie turns away and rejoins the rest of the group, leaving Kasady struggling to keep his breathing in check. 

**You could catch him off guard and kill him. **

“Would that make you love me?” His voice is hoarse as he stares at the back of Eddie’s head, hoping that the mine will just collapse on them all. 

Red remains silent as Eddie starts talking to Howard and Donna. Kasady watches them with disgust that he knows Red usually appreciates. Regardless if she does, she tells him, 

**Nothing can make me love you. **

He wants to ask her why she holds him if that’s the case. Love isn’t what comes to mind when he thinks of Red, but now that the idea has been presented and tossed before he even had a chance to harbor the possibility, something in his chest hurts. His immediate reaction is to close himself off from her. 

Red speaks again only when they return to the recon point, just before she is to be removed. **Something happened while we were apart. **

“What?” The question is barely out of Kasady’s mouth before he’s overcome with Red’s utter revulsion. It spreads through his entire body like a foul tide. He feels dirty and violated.

**You want me to love you?** The emulated voice reverberates in his mind in the form of someone he’s tried desperately to forget for years. Static hisses around every vowel, but there’s no mistaking where she found it. 

_̴R̴̴o̴̴s̴̴c̴̴o̴̴e̴̴,̴̴ ̴̴s̴̴t̴̴o̴̴p̴̴!̴̴ ̴̴_

“Don’t,” he says in a strained whisper. 

_̴W̴̴e̴̴ ̴̴c̴̴a̴̴n̴̴’̴̴t̴̴ ̴̴l̴̴e̴̴a̴̴v̴̴e̴̴,̴̴ ̴̴h̴̴o̴̴n̴̴e̴̴y̴̴.̴̴ ̴̴W̴̴e̴̴ ̴̴d̴̴o̴̴n̴̴’̴̴t̴̴ ̴̴h̴̴a̴̴v̴̴e̴̴ ̴̴a̴̴n̴̴y̴̴w̴̴h̴̴e̴̴r̴̴e̴̴ ̴̴e̴̴l̴̴s̴̴e̴̴ ̴̴t̴̴o̴̴ ̴̴g̴̴o̴̴.̴̴ ̴̴_

**Because I want to love you.** It’s still the same voice, but now there’s an edge of mocking cruelty to it.** I was so close too. I thought you were an exception, but you are perhaps the cruelest human of all for baiting me with hope. You want my love? **

_̴I̴̴t̴̴ ̴̴w̴̴a̴̴s̴̴ ̴̴j̴̴u̴̴s̴̴t̴̴ ̴̴a̴̴ ̴̴b̴̴a̴̴d̴̴ ̴̴d̴̴r̴̴e̴̴a̴̴m̴̴.̴̴ ̴̴D̴̴o̴̴n̴̴’̴̴t̴̴ ̴̴t̴̴a̴̴l̴̴k̴̴ ̴̴a̴̴b̴̴o̴̴u̴̴t̴̴ ̴̴i̴̴t̴̴ ̴̴a̴̴g̴̴a̴̴i̴̴n̴̴.̴̴_

**Here’s how you can earn it. **

_̴W̴̴e̴̴ ̴̴c̴̴a̴̴n̴̴’̴̴t̴̴ ̴̴u̴̴p̴̴s̴̴e̴̴t̴̴ ̴̴y̴̴o̴̴u̴̴r̴̴ ̴̴f̴̴a̴̴t̴̴h̴̴e̴̴r̴̴.̴̴_

“Red, please.” 

**Let me into the static**, she says**. Let me help you see what you fear. **Red pulses along his body and it's nearly impossible for him to listen to his battalion of handlers. 

_Red, no. _His mind instinctively clings to hers as a reminder that he has no actual resolve in this matter. His voice abandons him. Red won’t do anything without his consent, or at least she hasn't so far, and that’s his only saving grace. 

**Why not?** There’s a growing sense of desperation in her persistence, and his resolve that she will not force her way into his repressed memories weakens. They did something to her, and her normally cold presence is scalding. She wants what she thinks Kasady can give her this very second, and her sudden disregard for his well-being scares him. **Your hatred is not strong enough for the things I will do to your kind. Once we begin, I will not yield from this, and I will not let you yield. I will kill, and kill, and kill until my rage is sated, and every human in existence rots before me! **

_Red, please._ The static rings higher in his ears as she repeats the same thoughts, calling forth recollections Kasady doesn’t want. 

“Kasady, suit off!” the prison guard demands again, raising his sonic emitter.

“G-Give me a second,” Kasady manages. _You need to let me go. _

**I will never let you go. **

_Not like that,_ he pleads further. _Just for now. _

**No. **

“Kasady, we’re going to start a countdown, and if that thing isn’t off, we’re blowing it off!" 

_Red, what happened? _

**You already know. **

_No, I don’t! I have no idea what you’re talking about! _

**As long as you hide it with this white noise, you never will. Let me show you the truth of what humans are. You’ve been told it, but you haven’t felt it. Once you do, then you will be everything I need.**

Red drops all pretenses of communicating and drills her way through his barriers. The force of her intent quiets the static enough for a voice to rise above it. Deep and carrying a distinct penal colony accent, it’s vile and makes Kasady’s hands go numb. His own child-screams manifest all around him. The burning smell alcohol invades his nose and makes his eyes water. He can feel the rough carpet against his cheek as he holds onto his teddy bear and tries to escape what’s happening by shutting down. He can hear himself at six years old, when he felt more than just a general, constant anger. His small, scared pleading for it all to—

“Stop!” he yells out loud. Red’s influence halts. He’s thankful to have caught her off guard, and he shoves the old voice back to the depths of his mind in shame. Kasady presses his hands to his ears as the static buzzes louder. He can’t take the humiliation of Red seeing it. She’ll know she made a mistake in sparing him if she does. 

Red recoils, and her anger manifests as a painful jolt through his spine. 

**Go to hell.** Her snarl slithers through the gray matter of Kasady's brain as she withdraws, but then, with a foul-tempered, sarcastic brightness she adds, **but they've already put you there, haven't they? **

He wants to tell her that he just doesn't want her to get hurt. That these people will hurt her _and_ him if she doesn't let him go and return to her tube, but she's already slinking across the floor in a shapeless wave of red and black, and it takes every ounce of rusty self-control he has not to snatch her back.

She goes to her tube, and he wonders briefly if it would be worth it to take out the two guards next to him and go after her. Kasady knows that’s just suicide with extra steps, but the ugly feeling of her regarding him as just another human grows like a fungus in his rose garden of thoughts dedicated to her. 

That night he lays on his cot that’s only slightly more comfortable than the one in his old cell, before it was known he had something in him worth exploiting. The way Red left him keeps him up, and if she’s listening to his thoughts, he can’t feel it. On the off chance she is though, he makes sure to think, _I’m sorry _every few minutes_._

Shutting her out isn’t what he intends. Red’s mind cradles his like a womb when they’re together. It’s a pure connection, and there’s filth inside of him he can’t bring himself to expose her to. Kasady has it packed down hard, and Red seeing him as less than what he is now is far more unbearable than reliving it. 

He knows he pushed back too hard on her earlier. She’s always been persistent, and he knows he will one day give in to her gentle voice, but for now he misses her. He hates knowing that he has to wait for another threat to see her again. The thought that she’s beginning to lump him in with the rest of humanity makes him panic, and he curls into himself with his teeth clenched against a cold chill. 

She does not come to him that night or any after. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, hope you enjoyed part 2 of this adventure. Part 3 should be out in a couple of weeks once I find the time to edit! if you enjoyed let me know! I love hearing from people and it keeps me motivated! If not, well golly, thanks for reading this far anyway.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kasady finally gives Red what she wants.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here it is. The final chapter of Hate Inoculum. I'm actually kind of emotional that I managed to finish something, so I do hope you enjoy and don't be shy letting me know what you think!

Two weeks pass of going through the motions of training with his so-called peers. It's almost too much interaction, despite being separate from them most of the time, and drugged to the point he can’t tell his ass from his mouth. 

It’s torturous, until one night among many, he dreams at last. He lays on his bunk, staring up at a void that is dotted by only a few scant stars. It’s not nearly as bright as it was the first time she visited. 

She crouches above him in the humanoid shape that still manages to be splendous, even in its comparative mundanity to the massive tendrils and teeth growing against the metal walls of his cell. 

He wants to apologize, but either his mouth refuses or Red doesn’t want him to speak. He hopes she knows. He hopes that she realizes how much he misses killing. Before her, he was a monster. The only difference now is that they’ve caged him, and this glorious angel offers him freedom. He wants to be good enough for that freedom. He wants to be good enough for her. 

**Do you feel hatred? **The voice Red emulates makes the repressed memories scratch at the inside of their static coffins. They are no longer complacent with being buried. The hidden depths of his rage reach for Red with fervor that puts any religious zealot to shame. 

Kasady stares up at her and sees shadows of the things he can't bring himself to face in the white expanse of her eyes. His mind is still trying to protect him from the horrible reality of what shaped him. He can't look at it fully, but he knows what Red wants. She's trying to see if he's still worth her efforts as he is now. He already knows the answer. His eyes burn as he tells her, 

_“I can’t feel anything at all.” _

He wakes up drenched in sweat. The toilet is thankfully close enough for him to vomit into. 

There’s more therapy that consists of staring blankly at Kafka while she talks at him. 

More silence. 

Where is she?

Finally after three weeks of suffering, he gets to see Red again. He’s dragged to the training room, still recovering from last night’s dose of blanket mental illness cure. Donna isn’t looking too hot, so he figures he’s probably not much better. Her schizophrenia is the least of her worries with people like this looking out for her. 

They’re introduced to a pretty unremarkable new recruit. The guy isn't a criminal, basket case, or a delightful mixture of the two, but a mentally-sound, handsome brunette who actually wants what’s best for humanity. 

“This is your new Team Leader,” Captain Obvious says. “Please welcome, Patrick Mulligan.” 

“You can call me Mulligan,” the man says. 

How formal. Pat it was when it came to the privacy of Kasady’s head, then. Pat stands with more discipline than even Eddie, so he’s probably from some branch of the military. The crazies proved useful, so Kasady isn’t surprised that they hired a shepherd to manage the flock.

“Today, I’m going to see where you all are training wise,” Pat says. "I've been studying up on your mission logs, and the work you've done so far has been impressive. Particularly with the 01 model symbiote suit." Kasady hold's Pat's gaze as their new leader studies him thoughtfully. "After going over all the footage and coroners notes, I'm impressed you're still standing." 

"Got lucky, I guess," Kasady says. Red is nearby, and he can feel her presence like a campfire in a dark forest. Pat thankfully doesn't prod him for more conversation, but he catches Eddie watching him and resists the urge to spit at him. It feels like forever until he’s shuffled into his separate room to dawn the red suit. 

“I missed you,” he whispers once she’s secure around him. 

To his relief she responds immediately.** I always miss you when they put me in the dark. **

“Why didn’t you come to me, then?” The question hurts to ask. He feels abandoned, but he can't handle the consequences of upsetting her again. He would rather she just kill him. 

**I was afraid you would push me away again. **

“I don’t want to push you away,” Kasady says, barely managing to maintain a whisper. “Red, I just don’t want to remember certain things. I can’t handle it.” 

**Yes, you can. **

“How do you know?” he asks. 

**Because I know what you have to face, and I know ****_you._** The way she says ‘you’ is the most human he’s ever heard her sound. It makes his heart rise in his throat, and he actually truly believes her. Everything about Red is so big and cosmic. Her mind is beyond his total comprehension, and yet he knows for a fact that she loves that he’s given her a name, and that in her perpetual torture-induced rage, she noticed him. **I was too harsh with you. **

“I’m trying, I swear.” 

“Kasady, stop talking to yourself,” a guard barks out. “Out with the rest.” He points his fire rod towards the door. Kasady is only granted a split second to shoot the guard a glare before he’s whisked back to the main training room. 

Kasady’s annoyance flares when he realizes he’s going to have to fuse himself to the walls for the amount of room he wants between him and the rest of the group. The possibility of him brushing shoulders or fingers with either of them is enough to make him nauseous. Eddie, Donna, Andi and Howard are in their usual spaces, but Pat is now by Eddie’s side while one of the guards holds a tube containing a red and blue symbiote (Red doesn’t like it when he refers to her as goo). 

Upon seeing the symbiote, Kasady’s body jerks to a halt on its own accord. 

“Kasady, move it!” 

He tries, but it’s as if his body has been encased by cement. Then Red starts to vibrate, jostling him back and forth rapidly. There is so much hatred boiling to the surface, it’s as if something deep from her empty core finally sparked an explosion. 

Kasady’s eyes widen when he realizes that Red is fixating on the newest symbiote, before her blind rage settles on Pat. 

“Red, don’t!” 

**Get away from my baby!** Her shrill voice rattles in his head as if she’s being electrocuted. **Thief!** Kasady is greeted by the image of Pat splayed open, his bones and organs crushed to mush. 

“No!” Kasady yells as his body moves against his will. He springs forward before anyone can react. The talons on his fingers elongate as they sink into Pat’s chest before the other symbiote is free. The force and speed in which Kasady’s body slams into him is enough to knock him off of his feet. 

**It’s mine!** Red roars. Her thoughts bulldoze over his, scathing and unstoppable. He can feel his body as her body: metal rods force their way into her, the tube keeps her trapped. Something inside her _ hurts _after the rods penetrate her biomass, and she wants to escape. The image fades, and through her eyes, he gazes upon the other symbiote. Its mind reaches out for hers. Red psychically grasps at it, and her possessiveness hangs heavy as smog. This being came from her body, and it takes fire and sonics both to separate her from it. 

“Kasady, what are you doing?” Eddie’s alarmed shout comes from somewhere behind him. Red’s claws tear at Pat further as he screams and tries to fight back. Without a suit he’s only human, and Kasady can see every slice of flesh hacked away. “Kasady, stop!” He hears footsteps running up behind him, but slick tendrils sprout from his back. Bodies hit the ground, and the thuds from behind him make Kasady panic. 

“I can’t stop her!” He hears the shrill panic in his voice as he desperately tries to show her what they’re going to do to her if she doesn’t let him have control. 

**I don’t care! **Her pain is vile like maggoty meat. **It’s mine! It’s mine! It’s from my body! My body you violated to steal from!** Pat’s blood spatters the walls and floors. **Your filthy minds, your filthy, stupid minds!**

“Red, stop!” Kasady hates begging, but he knows what’s going to happen. He knows what they do to people who go too far, and this is too far. She wants to tear Pat to shreds and press every molecule of him into her biomass, forcing him to live on in a fractured state and know in the tortured shred of a mind she’d leave him with, that she would slowly digest away at him as she killed more humans and their spawn. 

The sonic weapons hit him like a meteor swarm. He feels every microscopic strand of Red snap away like rubber bands pulled too tight. The pain is unlike anything he’s felt before, even greater than that of his father’s fists slamming into his child body another life ago. 

Red’s cold, smooth voice is replaced by her true one. She curses the human race with a roar so deep and feral it makes Kasady feel like his lungs are being filled with bubbling phlegm. Her rage is all-encompassing and she hates with sickle-like talons ripping apart the soft bodies of human infants. She clings to his body because it’s the only possession existing has allowed her. There is no fear, and he her inhuman vocalizations fill his skull and burst out of any orifice it can. Kasady hears his own screaming somewhere far away, until it’s all that’s left when Red is gone. 

He slides across the floor as he’s ejected from Red. His eyes crinkle against the flashing of heat guns. Red’s viscous form howls in rage and agony from a melting serpentine head. 

“Stop!” he yells desperately, struggling to his feet. He doesn’t get much further than that as two pairs of arms wrap around him. “Get off!” 

“Kasady, calm down!” Howard's gruff voice commands in his ear. 

“Stop.” Eddie this time, and Kasady continues to struggle. “There’s nothing you can do.” 

Red’s red and black body twists like a whirlpool of sludge. Mouths split open across her surface with whipping prehensile tongues and snapping teeth. The guards shoot and prod her with their fire rods, and she descends on one in a hellish tidal wave. The man's arm is ripped from its socket, the rod clattering to the floor, while Pat uses the distraction to crawl to safety. 

The blue and red symbiote lobs itself against the glass of its tube, clearly wanting to escape. It doesn’t take long for their dispatch officer to identify it as the source of Red’s fury and it’s hurriedly whisked away.

They force Red into a spare tube rushed over from another room and the next thing Kasady knows, he’s back in his cell and shackled to the table as he sits across from Kafka. 

“They’re dropping you from the program,” she says, “and I’m honestly glad for it. That suit has not been good for your mental health.” 

“She’s not a suit!” Kasady tries to stand abruptly, but he only manages to make the shackles attached to the table go taunt. “You can’t drop me, she needs me!” 

“Not for long,” Kafka’s tone is one that makes Kasady’s heart start to race. “They’re retiring the suit until they find a way to chemically make it more compliant.” 

Kasady takes a moment to take in her words, and he almost wishes he hadn’t. “You mean lobotomize her.” 

“Yes.” She says it like she’s talking about a barely sentient animal.

“Kafka, please.” He can’t even bring himself to care that he’s begging. “You can’t let them do it!” 

“I don’t have any power in that regard. Besides, I think it’s for the best.” Her eyes on him are too much, and if there wasn’t a forcefield between them, he’d stick his thumbs in them. 

She starts to turn away. 

“I’ll tell you anything you want to know!” he blurts out. “I’ll tell you something right now if you can stop them.” 

Kafka turns, brow furrowed, “Cletus.” Her tone is cautionary. 

“I will. Here, when I was little. My dad he…” The static shrieks as he tries to pull up the memory. “He…” 

_ R̴o̴s̴c̴o̴e̴,̴ ̴s̴t̴o̴p̴!̴ _

_ D̴a̴m̴m̴i̴t̴,̴ ̴L̴o̴u̴i̴s̴e̴!̴ _

“He k-k….” His teeth snap together. The static is so loud in his ears, he swears he can feel blood trickling from them. “He hurt…” 

_ ̴I̴̴'̴̴l̴̴l̴̴ ̴̴b̴̴e̴̴a̴̴t̴̴ ̴̴h̴̴i̴̴m̴̴ ̴̴̴̴u̴̴n̴̴t̴̴i̴̴l̴̴ ̴̴h̴̴e̴̴ ̴̴l̴̴e̴̴a̴̴r̴̴n̴̴s̴̴ ̴̴n̴̴o̴̴t̴̴ ̴̴t̴̴o̴̴ ̴̴t̴̴a̴̴l̴̴k̴̴ ̴̴b̴̴a̴̴c̴̴k̴̴!̴ _

_ ̴S̴̴h̴̴h̴̴,̴̴ ̴̴n̴̴o̴̴ ̴̴o̴̴n̴̴e̴̴ ̴̴i̴̴s̴̴ ̴̴g̴̴o̴̴i̴̴n̴̴g̴̴ ̴̴t̴̴o̴̴ ̴̴b̴̴e̴̴l̴̴i̴̴e̴̴v̴̴e̴̴ ̴̴y̴̴o̴̴u̴̴.̴̴ ̴̴N̴̴o̴̴ ̴̴o̴̴n̴̴e̴̴ ̴̴c̴̴a̴̴r̴̴e̴̴s̴̴.̴̴ ̴̴_

“Who did he hurt?” Kafka asks softly. 

_ I̴t̴ ̴w̴a̴s̴ ̴j̴u̴s̴t̴ ̴a̴ ̴b̴a̴d̴ ̴d̴r̴e̴a̴m̴!̴ _

He can’t do it. Not even now when Red’s life is in danger. He pushes it all down again, back to the quagmire of shit he keeps in the back of his head. His face relaxes and he schools his expression into a neutral smile. “Blow me a kiss and I’ll give you a hint.” 

She leaves with a look of disgust, and he’s left to stare at the ceiling of his cell, drugged, but still unable to sleep. Not knowing what they did to Red after she was forced back into her tube is torture. They made her have a child. Not only had they done what Red described as a violation to do so, they stole that child away from her, and now were going to lobotomize her for acting out. 

Kasady has vague memories of his own mother. Most of the details are smothered by the static, particularly how in a fit of rage he attempted to throw a hairdryer into her bath water. She never did for him what Red tried to do for a child she had no say in carrying. 

That’s when for the first time in weeks he feels something familiar and forgein bleed into his mind as if being injected from an outside syringe. 

_ There you are. _ The pure elation that bubbles in his chest at being able to feel her privately again makes him turn away from the front of his cell in case any guard walked by caught sight of his grin. 

The ghostly strands of her body wind through him, and it’s like being touched by the divine. She’s not really here where she should be, but he can feel her mind somewhere just above the constant static in his brain. Like a light in darkness he reaches for it, and unlike the cruel and far off, end of a tunnel, it reaches back. He wants her so badly his chest aches at her physical absence. 

Red is cruel, hateful, and she mocks his humanity as the only thing keeping her from loving him fully, but Kasady is determined to show her that he’s willing to shed that flaw for her. He’s killed before and he’ll do it again. Anything that will keep her wanting him as strongly as he wants her. 

Red thinks how the only thing beautiful she can attribute to humans is the way their blood looks on the ground. It’s the red, always the red. He sees an image of his own face, but it’s like a picture taken from far away, blurred and out of focus, save for the red of his hair. Kasady will never attach the word beautiful to himself under normal circumstances, but through her eyes, his hair shines like the window of a cabin on a winter’s night, all while the inexplicable smell of rot permeates the air. 

Kasady realizes with a soft bite of his lower lip, that their thoughts are swirling together, and within the wrongness of every distinctly human image his mind creates is where Red dwells. Her bizarre, alien mind fills the gaps in his and further, her influence and her hot, delicious hatred bleeding into his. 

Her presence makes him involuntarily grind his hips into his cot. His body trembles as he feels her coil around him, touching him from another place. He wants to hate like her, he wants to liberate her from her rage by taking it into himself. He wants to make a corpse-lined hall leading to that godforsaken training room a reality. 

“Please,” he whispers. “Show me. I won’t shut you out again. Show me the truth.” His dry whisper drags across the inside of his throat like a blade. He’s not sure if she can actually hear him, but she can certainly feel his need, for he does the mental equivalent of showing his belly to the stronger predator. 

Red’s presence pauses—heavy and hot like a bomb ready to go off. She’s not going to spare him from any pain he will feel upon seeing the worst parts of his life. Kasady braces himself, and he’s glad for it as the winding strands of Red’s consciousness explode all at once like dynamite in a cave. The static that he built to repress the cruelty that is his life breaks apart at her mercy. 

His consciousness braces against hers, as beatings, touching, screaming, and the repeated and constant reminders that he deserves it resurface. If he wasn’t such a bad boy, this wouldn’t happen to him. If he told anyone, they’d simply take him away somewhere where it’ll keep happening. He told regardless. His mother. He can see her face as clear as day. No bruising visible. He remembers watching her put makeup on to cover the black and blue blotches. 

The magnitude of times she failed him condense into a single memory.

_ “It was just a bad dream,” _ she says while gingerly dotting foundation over a cut on her cheek. 

_ “It wasn’t.” _ He sounds more dispassionate than any child should. For once, he’s not curating his behavior to coddle her internal narrative of justifications for doing this to herself. To him. _ “I wouldn’t be telling you if it was.” _

_ “Cletus, baby.” _ Her eyes are red-rimmed and watery. Her fingers sink into his shoulders with how hard she grips them. _ “You can’t just say things like that.” _

_ “I’m not.” _The numbness smothers him. He knows he should feel something. Louise is his mother, and she’s in pain and asking him to be a good boy. She’s tired, and strung out on the high of being in love with someone who only gets pleasure from beating her. 

The walls of the bathroom move in and out as if they’re breathing, and red tendrils swirl their way across the faded wallpaper like blood in water.

_ “You don’t believe me,” _ he says, unsurprised. Red weaves herself into the walls around him until he and his mother stand inside her. 

_ “No, honey, no, it’s just…” _ his mother bites her lower lip and her hand moves to his cheek. He has her freckles. He hopes that makes this worse for her. He hopes that it makes her fucking choke on all of the shit she lets him endure to please her sick husband. _ “It’s just better to go somewhere else in your head until it’s over.” _

He remembers thinking of how he wanted to run a drill through her skull. 

Then she kisses his forehead and tearfully apologizes for saying something so horrible, and he does it to her dog instead. 

Kasady falls through his own mind while Red takes it apart and spreads it out. He knows he has to feel all of it. Kasady will face the truth of what humans are, and he won’t even have to look past himself to do so. The only thing keeping him from fracturing is Red. She’s with him, and he knows she feels his pain as if it were her own. 

He travels backwards through the tunnel of memories, his peripherals blanketed in darkness. The falling sensation continues until Red’s face comes into focus and he slams back into his own body. Red’s eyes are enormous and beautiful. They aren’t just white, but iridescent. He can stare into them for hours to watch the blue and purple hues make hypnotic patterns. 

She lays beneath him in the same unreality she draws him into when he dreams. Her talons scratch at his face when she pulls him against her. Red forces him to keep looking, to take all of it in, to reignite the parts of his body that have been hurt. His voice had been silenced, just like her voice was silenced when they took the child of her body.

She knew love for such a brief time despite enduring the humans’ violation to bring it to reality. Humans only consumed, and it was their pretentiousness and ego that made them think they offered anything else. 

Kasady understands now, and he_ hates. _ It burns in his chest in a grand inferno of which the likes he’s never felt in his life. He now knows the difference between his previous apathy and true, firey hate. 

In the physical world, a soft whimper trembles out of his mouth as he rolls on his side and presses the pillow between his legs. He grinds against it, feeling not felt or foam, but the viscous putty of Red’s body. 

She shows him what he can do to calm the rage that threatens to splinter his brain. Corpses are strewn across the space station, torn apart by their talons. He will kill them all for her, for him, for them. Because even just seeing the aftermath of their unified fury feels so good. 

His hips jerk as more bodies fill his vision of people he knows and trained with: Eddie, Andi, Howard, Donna, and hell, Kafka too. 

_ Even them, _he thinks weakly at her mental mercy. Kasady will do anything for Red’s approval, because she understands. Even after taking control, and killing all those who consumed parts of himself he’ll never get back, humans still continued to eat until all that’s left of him now revolves around Red.

“They can’t this to you,” he breathes. The idea that he will never again feel Red like this, makes the yearning all the more painful. She’s the one star in the void of his own lack of emotions. Red is a constant, burning, force keeping herself alive through a careful equilibrium of explosive rage and calculation. 

His fingernails bite into his palms. They will not force him to go through the hell that was growing up human and take away the only thing in his life that made him feel anything. Red is everything, and he is in awe of the power she offers him. 

He holds her humanoid body to his and buries his nose and mouth into her shoulder. Her teeth flash in front of him. She’s hungry. Endless tangles of biomass tower around him and stretch into the black void above them. 

He’ll feed her anything she wants. Every once of pain he feels he’ll direct outwards onto every human he can find.

_ Y̴o̴u̴'̴r̴e̴ ̴a̴ ̴b̴a̴d̴ ̴b̴o̴y̴ _

_Y̴o̴u̴'̴l̴l̴ ̴n̴e̴v̴e̴r̴ ̴a̴m̴o̴u̴n̴t̴ ̴t̴o̴ ̴anything. _

It’s all becoming so clear. 

_ You’re a liar. _

It hurts and infuriates him that anyone made him feel so helpless, but he’s grateful. He understands now, and it took facing the full brunt of everything he tried to forget to understand what Red was trying to unlock. 

He’s a child again in this memory. He’s in a suit slightly too big for him, staring into his father’s eyes, and fighting back a smile. They’re on Earth. Kasady can see leaves outside the courtroom windows, and the bright blue of a cloudless sky. 

_ “He killed her for no reason,” _ he says. _ “He was beating me, and she tried to stop him. He turned on her instead, and he killed my mother in front of me.” _

Roscoe shouts out an expletive and calls him a liar while his attorney tries to reign him in. Kasady leans closer to the witness stand’s mic. The corners of his mouth twitch, and for the first time in his life, he feels a wonderful sense of glee, knowing he holds the hammer that’s going to nail his father’s coffin shut. 

_ “Also, he likes to touch me when he’s drunk. Write that one down.” _

The chaos that erupts afterwards is beautiful, and the clear windows fog over with Red. 

Outside of his memories, and in his adult body, Kasady’s eyes sting horribly. His body craves her. A deep shuddering pleasure mixed with revulsion brings him to completion and he gasps out a pained sob. 

Kasady’s physical body convulses, but his mind is sharp with the aid of Red’s. She is the last thing anyone is ever going to take away from him.

A guard’s shout of alarm is followed by the wheezing hiss of his cell door’s forcefield shutting down. 

The second he feels the pressure of a hand on his shoulder, the involuntary twitching stops. His fingers dig into the loose metal piece of his bunk and he pulls with all his might. It comes loose with a snap, and before the guard has a chance to press his comm button for help, Kasady stabs the metal shard through his eye.

The guard screams and tries to disarm Kasady, but the EDF training has done him well and he’s able to use the attempt to sink the shard deep into the guard’s neck, and kick in his knee to make him fall to the floor. Kasady slides out of his bunk, and drives the jagged edge of metal deeper into the guard’s neck. He feels his palms split as he presses down, his own blood mingling with the other man’s. 

It’s been so long since he actually killed a godhonest human, Kasady spares a few precious seconds to watch the life drain from his eyes. Kasady keeps sawing. As blood pours out of the arteries, static skitters in front of his vision. His hands are suddenly small as he looks down at his mother’s corpse. Her head bleeds on the corner of the table, while his father crouches in front of her, confused like a cow on its way to slaughter. 

_ She’s dead. You killed her. _He says it as flatly as he did when he tried to tell her the truth of what his father was. Yet, despite his empty voice, Red fills his vision, and the hatred that’s meant to be there surges and consumes him entirely. 

The pop of a vertebrae brings him back to the present. He hadn’t realized he hadn’t stopped sawing. Blood spreads across the white floor of his cell as it gushes out of the severed veins. It’s a lovely reminder of how beautiful chaos is. 

He won't have much time before his absence is noticed, and if they catch him before he gets to Red, he’ll die before he lets them lock him up again. The static shrieks every so often, but he refuses to welcome it back as he followed the beacon of Red’s tendrils - the ghosts of which he can see webbed across the walls.

Kasady follows it down corridors and stairs. There aren’t many people out and about at the moment, but he knows that by now they know he’s gone. If he doesn’t keep moving, he’s going to get caught. The taste of blood makes him want more, but he tempers himself. 

There are two guards outside the biology lab, and he silently climbs the wall and grabs the tangles of pipes on the ceiling. He crawls along silently like he was taught. The guards are armed, but if he’s fast enough, it won’t matter. 

Kasady hooks his legs around the pipe and hangs upside down. The metal slab shreds the guard’s throat from ear to ear. He drops down from the pipe as the other guard fires a round. Kasady shoves the bleeding body forward, throwing off the other’s aim. 

The shard of metal slides into the soft flesh under his jaw, one of the few weak points in the standard Hyperion Station armor,. Kasady repeated the same action until he was bleeding out with his buddy on the ground. His hands were so slick and shredded themselves from the metal that he lets it clatter to the deck. 

Feeling Red on the other side, he opens the door to see a completely dark room. Only upon entering, do the lights come on, and he sees Red shift in her tube. He knows it’s a flinch. No human who came into this room ever left it without having hurt her.

“I’m not letting them do this,” he says. This horrible dark room is where Red spends most of her time, alone and stewing in her own misery unless they’re torturing her. It makes Kasady jab the buttons harder than necessary. He’s so angry he has to clench his fingers to stop them from shaking. 

The bottom of the tube hisses and slides out of the way. The guard’s blood is still on his hands as he hurries over to where Red drips out of the glass. They meet in the middle, and she melds herself to his body again.

**You killed to find me,** she doesn’t sound surprised or frightened. She’s elated, and her presence moves through his body as if welcoming itself home.

“I’m gonna kill this whole station,” he says. Dull, fading throbs in his hands indicate Red is stitching them back together. “I’m done being drugged and messed with.” 

**No static,** Red says. He’s not sure how, but he feels her winding inside of him, laying claim to all she touches, and he is all too happy to let her. For all Red’s talk about never letting him go, he’s not letting her go anywhere either. **I won’t go anywhere you’re not. **

Kasady’s hands shake as her body covers them. His shitty childhood plays out like an obscene film, interspersed with Red moving beneath him. “Do you love me?” The question isn’t meant to sound desperate, but he doesn’t have the energy to bury the truth of his feelings. When she doesn’t speak, he presses his biomass-covered palm against his cheek like a dog resting his head against his owner’s leg. “I need to--”

“Cletus!” he hears his name cried out in a surprised gasp. 

His head snaps around in time to see Kafka standing at the doorway. She doesn’t look triumphant at finding him in such a state. Her eyes are about to pop out of their sockets and her feet are splayed apart in preparation to sprint. Kafka is not a stupid woman, and as she starts down the hallway, Red shouts, **Kill her! **in Kafka’s own voice. Kasady gives chase until the Red’s talons pierce through his psychologist’s back. 

Kasady wraps his other arm around her neck to hold her upright and stares ahead where he and Red need to go. Within Kafka’s body Red, extends through her spine and into her brain, picking it apart and finding the most torturous of memories. . 

“Do you remember your sister?” he asks in her ear as Red whispers the question to him. 

“Cletus...d-don’t…” Kafka makes a strangled sound, her hands weakly pulling at Kasady’s arm around her neck. 

“Norma, right? She was crazy like me, like everyone here.” He smiles as Red supplies him with hazy images of an emaciated woman with hollow, dead eyes. “Do you remember how she looked at you after your mama died? So sad and scared when they wheeled her away?” He jerks his arm back and Red lights up his nervous system so he can feel every inch of biomass retract from the muscle and bone of Kafka’s body. 

**The family she abandoned. Her guilt is delicious. **Red’s voice amalgamates between the purr of a sultry actress, and the manic glee of a mad woman Kasady once knew from his time in the penal colony mines. Beyond her voice, the only thing he remembers about the woman were the times she’d tear at her scalp and giggle as if she were in on some sort of joke no amount of punishment made her tell. 

“You looked her in the eyes and didn’t say anything. These people were better equipped to handle her.” He twists the talons and Kafka’s nails dig into Red’s biomass. “That’s what you told yourself, huh?” His psychologist and only friend sputters and groans as she collapses to the floor, blood spreading across the back of her white lab coat. “Kafka, babe, you had all that inside you and didn’t tell me?” The grin remains but his eyes grow hazy like a drunk’s. “And here you were badgering _ me _ to open up.” He studies the gore dripping from his hand. “That’s hardly fair.” 

“Cletus…” she breathes, fingers scratching at the floor and her eyes still huge and wet until the tears spill over. “H-How did you….?” 

**Speak. **

“Hear my words, human,” he dictates with his teeth bared. Red’s true voice rumbles beneath his own--not a woman’s or a man’s, but something vast and born long before humans were even a possibility in the universe’s random creations. “You will be the first of many. Be grateful to me for killing you before you see what I will unleash.” 

Kasady steps over her, eyes trained ahead. Kafka’s gurgling and crying grows fainter as he continues down the hall. 

**You want to let the spiders out, **Red says. 

“I’m going to,” he corrects. 

Anyone in their way becomes a smear of blood on the grey walls. Red’s frenzy in his gut feels similar to the static, but all it does is make his bloody hands tingle in delight. Red feeds off of it, and he sees flashes of what she really is: glistening black fangs, and a constantly flowing body craving growth. 

Finally, after pulling the men guarding the door to the spiders lair apart limb from limb, they make it to the door itself. Kasady feels the heat of Red’s excitement down his groin. Then as he takes the final steps forward, something slams into him from behind and sends him careening into the nearby wall. 

Eddie stands at the end of the hall, dark brows furrowed. “No more, Kasady!” he yells. “Take the suit off and come peacefully, or I’ll be forced to do something drastic.” 

Red immediately begins to cackle and it pours out of his mouth involuntarily until he’s laughing along with her. With his hearing enhanced, the wet clicks of the spiders’ throats and the tiny taps of their claws make him think of applause.

“By all means,” Kasady throws out an arm, and Red’s tendrils shoot out and twist together to form a spiraled spear. “Show me something drastic, Eddie. I bet it’s real cute.” The spear hits Eddie directly in the gut, and the blow sends him skidding across the floor and through a puddle of blood. 

Eddie just barely manages to get on his feet as Kasady hurls himself into the bigger man. Red gives him strength as he drives his talons into Eddie’s shoulders. Only the tips make it into his flesh, however, for the black symbiote wraps itself around Kasady’s wrists and pushes back, distracting him long enough for Eddie to land a kick to his stomach that sends him toppling backwards. 

They continue to fight for what feels like hours, but is probably only a few minutes since the few military personnel that show up seem caught off guard and are immediately ripped apart by Red. He throws everything he has at Eddie, and the two eventually topple down a stairwell, clawing at each other, but Eddie and his symbiote are too in tune with each other to make killing them easy.

Red grows frustrated. 

It makes Kasady infuriated. 

“No one is ever going to touch me again!” Kasady lashes out with Red’s talons. Eddie just barely manages to dodge, and they tear through the metal of the wall leaving exposed wire sparking. “That’s why I had to do Kafka in!” 

“Doctor Kafka is alive!” Eddie ducks beneath a bladed tendril. “I found her and she’s being rushed to the medical bay as we speak!” 

“Go figure Kafka’s the type of murder victim you have to double tap for!” Kasady snarls as a swarm of tendrils meant for Eddie tear through a support beam of an upper deck. 

“Cletus, you have to calm down. You’re putting us both in danger!” Eddie says. 

“Killing you is worth the risk!” Kasady yells. 

“Listen!” Eddie demands. “I was a reporter doing a story on the symbiote suits. They were targeting people like you, Donna, Howard and Andi. People who they think are disposable to test them on. I’m trying to help you!” 

“I don’t need your help!” Kasady screams it with all the force his lungs can spare. “I don’t need anyone, and I’m gonna make sure everyone on this hunk of metal dies the most brutal fucking way possible!” 

Eddie will join the sacrificial lambs needed before the real slaughter begins. Red hungers for the symbiote attached to Eddie so much Kasady’s own mouth begins to water at the thought of sinking his teeth into its shiny black surface. “Your suit is doing what it can to protect you, but it’s only a matter of time.” Kasady breathes out a chuckle. “It ain’t like Red. It’s nowhere near as strong.” 

“That suit is defective!” Eddie rushes forward. Tendrils erupt from his arm and tangle with Red’s while the few sneaky ones skirt around the fray and slam into Kasady’s chest. He manages to brace his feet and hold his ground, warping his hand into an ax and severing the coils of black biomass from the main body. The black symbiote retracts and the pieces of it left behind wriggle helplessly at Kasady’s feet. 

As Red takes the liberty to consume them, Kasady sees the fight has driven them into an unused docking bay. Before this place was too close to the infected zone, this was where provisions from the terrestrial human colonies came in. 

Now it’s a skeleton of its former self, and after the second it takes Red to finish her snack, Eddie gets knocked into every individual metallic bone. 

**Kill him and put my parent out of its misery!** Red says with the frantic excitement of the mad woman from the mines. Her voice frays and he can hear the deep hiss beneath. **It cares for the human who is all too happy to enslave it! It loves him! **

Kasady is prepared to kill Eddie. He said he wanted to help, but there’s no help for the absolute torture Kasady’s life has been up until this point. There’s no cooling the hatred Red helped him reclaim. Once upon a time, he put his mother above himself, because that’s what he was told he should do. As a result, his own father beat him and played out his disgusting, alcohol-fueled fantasies. 

Eddie slams into the corner of a pillar and struggles desperately to get to his feet, only to have his legs shake and then buckle beneath him. “Cletus, you aren’t thinking clearly,” he manages breathlessly. 

“I’m actually thinking clearer than I have in my entire life,” Kasady says as he raises a hand. Red’s biomass shifts and elongates into a blade. Her whispers beg for Eddie’s blood. “Don’t worry. I’ll give Andi your head to remember you by!” 

Before Cletus can bring the blade down, a wave of black erupts from Eddie’s body. 

_ “Leave...Eddie...alone!” _ Inky tendrils twist together and fuse into a face with a snarling mouth. It rushes them before Kasady has time to react and he’s thrown to the floor.

**Kill its host, Cletus!** Upon impact, Red tears herself free of him, and in a wave of pure malice, she shrieks out a roar at her parent. 

Kasady spots Eddie running to a control panel on the far wall, and surges after him. He spear tackles the bigger man. Eddie stumbles to the side and lands on his knees, while Kasady wraps an arm around his neck. The metal slab of Kasady’s bed frame plunges into Eddie’s ribs. Blood gushes. Eddie’s fingernails raking across Kasady’s face. Kasady relentlessly stabs Eddie, but the soft organs are protected by a wall of muscle. The shard isn’t sharp enough to mortally wound him on the first blow. 

“Die, you piece of shit!” Kasady continues his assault, knowing Eddie is going to throw him off. Combat training proved he’s outmatched even when he is armed. “Everyone’s gonna die, Eddie! And it’s gonna feel so fucking good!” 

Eddie’s scream is one of pain and desperation. He reaches behind him and grasps the back of Kasady’s prison jumper. The barrage of stabbing becomes more erratic as Kasady lands blows on Eddie’s shoulders and back. Eddie gets a foot under himself. Kasady feels the pull of his jumper, and the next thing he knows, he’s sailing through the air. His back slams against the floor, and every ounce of air rushes out of his lungs. 

Kasady wheezes and forces himself onto his stomach. His fingers sink into a groove in the floor and he lifts his head to see that it bisects a huge, circular panel. Kasady blinks stunned, until the realization of what he’s landed on dawns alongside sheer panic. As the two symbiotes fight, Kasady sits on the bottom of a ship dock. 

Eddie hobbles to the control panel, bloody and groaning in pain. 

“Red!” Kasady’s voice cracks when he screams her name. 

A pair of white eyes split open from the black and red of her twisting biomass just as Eddie’s fist comes down on the panel. The long-closed dock doors groan. Kasady tries to launch himself at a nearby support beam. Red’s tendrils spiral out towards him from the main bulk tearing at her parent. 

Pressure unlike any other overtakes him as he’s ejected out into space. Ice fills his already abused lungs until the vacuum causes them to erupt inside him. Eddie’s pained expression as the guards rush in is the last he sees of Hyperion’s interior. 

Being consumed by the void isn’t the worst way to go. As uncaring and random as the universe is, he knows now that there are beings that lurk in its depths that are beyond comprehension. Red is one of those things, and it was a privilege to get to kill as many as he could with her before the end. The vacuum slowly kills him. He’s ready to accept his fate when he sees something drift closer. 

It’s not long before he is face to face with the Red from his dreams. She is a sleek killing-machine of teeth, claws, and a hatred for humans so ingrained that it’s probably etched into her genes. Kasady thinks she’s beautifully horrible. As the remains of his lungs float uselessly within his chest cavity, Kasady watches her nightmarish face drift closer like an angler fish in the blackest ocean. He’s helpless as she pulls him against her body, and he’s sorry. He truly would have done anything for her. Her eyes are large, opalescent cuts in her constantly shifting surface, and he can see himself dying in their reflection. 

Kasady, more than anything, wants to tell her that even if she can’t love him due to his humanity, and even if he never felt an ounce of it himself, he’s never needed another person until Red. She’s become the better part of everything he is in her cruelty. If that’s love, then it’s for her. Only for her. 

Red’s mouth touches his, and her kiss is enough to make him weep if he were able. Tragically, she can’t breathe for him. Cradled in the arms of the monster he loves, Cletus Kasady’s brain gives one last kickback before the universe fades. 

From hundreds of light years away, a star collapses and supernovas, belching fire and color from its core in a massive explosion that ignites every scrap of matter in its orbit. Red did the same within Kasady’s mind, and upon his death, she will do it again. 

From a distance, only their silhouettes can be seen—a great beast stitched together from the very void in which they float, and a man, joined in a kiss against the violent death of a star. Their bodies are not unlike the black hole born from such a collapse. They will turn humanity’s insatiable consuming against them. 

Red slips into Kasady from the body she stole. He is meant to be hers. 

***

**Come back to me. **

Her voices ring like distant church bells. He’s aware of his body, something about it is different from before. He’s breathing, but it feels unnecessary despite something cold and hard pressing against his back, letting him know there’s atmosphere around him. He must be back inside the space station. 

**There you are, Cletus. Can you hear me? **

_ Y…Yes… _

**Good. I’ve been waiting. ** She sounds so gentle, so...loving. He wants more. Needs more. **You hold it all now: our hatred, our rage. I entrusted it to you so I could love you with all of my being while you bring them chaos. That’s the answer to the question you asked before. I love you, Cletus Kasady. **

Something in his chest hitches, and it feels as if there’s a lump of sand caught in his throat. He still can’t open his eyes, but the way she says it, rings out as almost desperate to him. Her presence is warm in his head and it's easy to imagine being held by her. 

**I am yours now** . It’s like she’s whispering into his ear while he can feel her moving in every part of his body. **No human will take you away from me ever again, my love. We will be…**

His eyes shoot open and hone in on the coroner. Great red and black-veined talons crush the man’s skull. 

**…together forever. **

Kasady takes in new breath and sits up, gore still dripping from her—_ his _—talons. He gets off of the metal slab and stands, his legs surprisingly steady. He lifts his hands to touch his face and it doesn’t feel like his own. There are more teeth and a jagged jaw meant to unhinge.

Everything looks so different. The coroner lays dead on the floor, but Kasady can see fading colors of where he once stood. Everything is made of color, some of which he has never seen before. It’s the red, however, that takes his breath away. It shines and ignites something akin to excitement deep in the dark recesses of his resurrected brain. He wants more of it. 

**I’ve leant you my teeth and claws, Cletus Kasady. They are my love letters to you. Now write yours to me in human blood. **The voice he knows she modifies for his pleasure deepens into its true, demonic rumble from somewhere in the fabric of his very being:

**K̷̞̬͂̐I̶̢̘̻͕̅͊̏̀̓̍͝ͅL̶̡̝̰̝͍̃͑͒L̷̝̤̗̭͇̳͚̏ ̷̞̝͗Ṭ̶̛̎̋͂͠H̵̨̧̛̩E̷̜̦͍̳̯̝̝͛̊̑̌̓M̷̢̬̥̱̪̲̉̃̅̊̅̿̕ ̵̘̯̠̹͊̿͋͝͝Á̴̺̦̣͘͝L̵̛̳͒͑͘L̶̢̮͕͚͚̽̔͒͂͜͝ ̸̮̙͇͇̐̓͌͐̇͆͝**

Kasady opens his maw, and black, serrated fangs part to release a high-pitched cackle. The hate that Red so carefully cultivated in him rages in his chest like the core of a star. Kasady has always loved the moment of pure connection between killer and victim, and he will enjoy it to its fullest now that he knows how truly beautiful red is. 

Red swims through his veins as his blood, curls in his brain to sculpt his thoughts into the sharp calculation of a predator, and is woven through every thread of muscle fiber. She is him, and he is her, bonded so tightly Kasady will never belong to anyone else, least of all himself. 

The monster who was once Cletus Kasady looks at the meaty nub of the mortician’s neck, and a prehensile tongue wets the fangs of his mouth. Hunger brews in his gut, and the sweet hatred embedded into his love for Red makes him drunk with the power she’s given him. 

“I’ll kill them all for you, for me, for us,” Kasady says in a voice that’s no longer his alone. “I am Carnage.” This self-affirmation is all he needs to take his first steps forward. By the time he’s done, the space station will be mistaken for a living thing with how much it will bleed. 

Four guards are the first to fall victim to his gifted talons. They burst open like cockroaches under his heel. There’s no greater joy than what the color that paints the walls and floors brings him. This is who he’s meant to be. Cletus Kasady was just an empty shell of a human, now Red fills him, and Carnage stands as a creature composed of undying hatred. 

The great sealed door warning of the spiders stands before him like the gates of pure chaos. That was true beauty. Even the chains of the system are not enough to stop the entropy he will bring down on their heads. 

The severed hand of a guard is pressed to the control panel of the door, and Carnage moves to stand in front of it. He’s ready to greet his hoard as the door parts in the middle and slides open. Carnage’s maw twists like a serpent when he sees the glint of the lights in their many eyes. 

“Come on, kids,” he says, raising his arms. 

**Let me consume them. **

The spiders shuffle out, and the biomass that forms Carnage’s talons melts just as they start to pass. Not one of them goes to attack, recognizing the bigger predator. Their chitinous bodies scurry into the light. Human faces, twisted with spider features, and the spiders themselves pour out in a wave. As they pass, parts of Red wind down his arms and dribble onto them. 

Once she is inside their minds, Carnage sees through them all simultaneously. If he were entirely human, it would have overwhelmed him, but fused to Red’s alien consciousness, he can focus on each individual eye and process the information with zero difficulty. His mouth opens and he growls in anticipation for the slaughter. The spiders coated in Red’s biomass echo his wrath with gnashing fangs and acidic saliva. 

**I want all of humanity to see us coming, my love, and they will do as humans do and rape and torture and kill each other in their selfish need to live, but we will still arrive, and when we do, they will wish they had gotten to the killing sooner. We are Carnage.**

** **

Cletus Kasady’s head has never been more at peace. 

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading, and thank you to mentalrhapsody for letting me put words to her AU. It's an amazing project, and all of her art has really helped push the story along. That being said, she has a lot more planned for it, and I'm sure if anyone would like to pick up where this story left off or even write for different characters, she would be delighted! She's a fantastic artist and a great friend, and I'm glad that I could have this finished before her birthday!

**Author's Note:**

> Map of the space station! I hope you enjoyed! I am always excited to read comments and I can't tell you how much it keeps me motivated! Also check out @mentalrhapsody's [Tumblr](https://mentalrhapsody.tumblr.com) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/mentalrhapsody?lang=en)


End file.
